Is it time to reframe the conversation?

Here’s a sight I hoped never again to witness. A boat being scrubbed and repainted on Reykjavik harbour will generally arouse little attention from passing tourists, but this is different and far more chilling. This is the Hvalur 8.

Iceland’s only fin whaling company, Hvalur hf, announced today that it will resume fin whaling on June 10th after a break of two years.

As many as 161 fin whales could be killed, and the tally may even reach over 200 fin whales if the whalers also decide to exploit a second quota of 48 fin whales to the east of Iceland [source Hafogvatn].

April 1st saw the start of the whaling season in Norway. Despite a widely-accepted international moratorium on commercial whaling, Norway and Iceland continue to hunt minke whales in the North Atlantic as they objected to the agreement.

I have to admit to bitter disappointment when I arrived in Tromsø, northern Norway, a few weeks ago, hoping to see orcas, only to find that I had missed them by a few days. Since 2013, the orcas have been seen really close to shore in the waters around Tromsø and neighbouring Kvaløya islands, towering dorsal fins slicing t

I’m sure you are as sickened as I am that every year from September to April, dolphins and small whales are still subjected to a bombardment of stress and cruelty in Taiji, Japan as they are hunted for meat or captured alive for display in zoos and aquaria.

Will 2018 be the year that I can finally visit beautiful Iceland purely as a tourist, rather than a campaigner? Maybe it’s not surprising that this fabled ‘land of fire and ice’ should offer visitors a host of contradictions, but the juxtaposition of whale watching and whale hunting in the same waters is surely one of the most logic-defying examples on the planet?